Top brands of 2008 owned by Nintendo, EA, Activision, and not Sony

by JC Fletcher on Jun 30th 2009 9:00PM

Wedbush Morgan Securities' 2009 industry report includes a list of the top thirty brands of 2008. The report notes that of the companies whose brands appear on the list, Nintendo, EA, and Activision were the only three with more than one brand to generate over $100 million at retail in the US last year.

And boy, did they. The top brand of the year, Guitar Hero -- perhaps you've heard of it -- was responsible for $992 million in US sales in 2008. The next two brands, Mario Bros. and Rock Band, generated $761 million and $662 million, respectively.

One company is notably absent from the top brands list: "Most strikingly," the report reads, "Sony had no top 30 brands for the third year in a row." Microsoft had two brands on the list (Gears of War and Fable) and Nintendo had four (Mario Bros., Wii Fit, Wii Play, and Pokémon). See the list of brands after the break.

Guitar Hero (Activision Blizzard) $ 992 million
Mario Brothers (Nintendo) $ 761 million
Rock Band (Electronic Arts) $ 662 million
Call Of Duty (Activision Blizzard) $ 446 million
Wii Fit (Nintendo) $ 407 million
Grand Theft Auto (Take-Two Interactive) $ 361 million
Madden Football (Electronic Arts) $ 312 million
Wii Play (Nintendo) $ 261 million
LEGO (LucasArts) $ 224 million
Star Wars (LucasArts) $ 180 million
Sonic (Sega) $ 163 million
Gears Of War (Microsoft) $ 146 million
The Sims (Electronic Arts) $ 143 million
Tom Clancy (Ubisoft) $ 130 million
Pokemon (Nintendo) $ 119 million
Need For Speed (Electronic Arts) $ 106 million
Warcraft (Activision Blizzard) $ 104 million
WWE (THQ) $ 103 million
Fallout (Bethesda Softworks) $ 100 million
NCAA Football (Electronic Arts) $ 94 million
Tiger Woods (Electronic Arts) $ 89 million
FIFA (Electronic Arts) $ 79 million
Imagine (Ubisoft) $ 78 million
Final Fantasy (Square Enix) $ 78 million
Dance Dance Revolution (Konami) $ 78 million
Metal Gear Solid (Konami) $ 77 million
Fable (Microsoft) $ 77 million
NBA Live (Electronic Arts) $ 71 million
Mortal Kombat (Midway Games) $ 70 million
Petz (Ubisoft) $ 70 million

Source: The NPD Group/Retail Track, Wedbush Morgan Securities estimates.

Tags: activision, brands, ea, Electronic-Arts, fable, gears-of-war, guitar-hero, mario, pachter, pokemon, rock-band, wedbush-morgan, wii-fit, wii-play

Reader Comments (67)

Boy, even Sonic made the list.

Mr Khan will be gloating for weeks!

boy even WWE made the list

30. Petz (Ubisoft) $ 70 million

I'm not fond of Sony's business practices, but I would've preferred anything of theirs over this.

Its times like these where I wish I were an investor with a time machine.

You know, you've been saying "I'm coming!" for a very long time now. I'm beginning to think your really not that premature.

Its cumming. And, what?

It can be both!

Only counting retail sales must be drastically underestimating the value of the warcraft brand.

Indeed. If you think about it, the sales of Wrath of the Lich King would not have even been equal to 3 months worth of subscription income.

And thats if you don't factor in the cost of manufacturing discs, distribution, and advertisement.

I'm surprised to see WarCraft that far down the list, to be honest.

Well, even though Sony themselves may not like this...as a fan of a lot of their excellent first party games, at least they're making us gamers happy :\

And that's all they care about too, tmac.

That's all the developers and the PR people care about, is making people happy. Which is good. Investors, on the other hand, like to see people happy with open wallets. This is the kind of list that'll get first/second-party developers like Team Ico and the God of War guys shut down and Sony will start publishing a bunch of Wii Fit clones.

Cue the scary music! The end is nigh!

Sad but true. Sony just can't afford to keep up the fantastic quality of their AAA first-party titles if nobody's buying them. Expect their next console to be similar in concept to the Wii - cheap and mainstream - with only the bare minimum of first-party hardcore games. Ratchet and Clank and God of War will probably be among the few franchises to survive.

Man, Nintendo sure does know how to make something out of nothing.

That's because they have ancient magic. How else do you think they have made so many people enthralled with their products?

How come ancient magic is always the best kind? Nobody's ever like, "The only way we can beat this thing is with brand-spankin'-new magic!"

"How come ancient magic is always the best kind?"

I know, right? Magic has come a long f--kin' way since then.

Because it always seems to have shit to defeat the evil foe your facing, especially if they are ancient as well.

Why is ancient magic the best kind?

Because good spells are freakin' hard to remember.

well, sony is probably the only one who makes new IP's more than any other company.

Why did they have to include "Not Sony" ?

I expect news, not brand bashing.

23. Imagine (Ubisoft) $ 78 million

What the effing eff is Imagine?

/googles "imagine ubisoft"

Ah. What a pity.

outside of a few (namely Rock Band, Gears of War, MGS and one or two others) there's absolutey nothing on that list that interests me in the slightest, especially not to where i can see they've made the money they have on quality. lately i've found myself enjoying the most niche, non-million-selling video games. i hope this isn't a sign that i'm becoming a dinosaur in gaming.

Nah, your just breaking the mold, may I join you?

23 Imagine (Ubisoft) $ 78 million
26 Metal Gear Solid (Konami) $ 77 million

I facepalmed and wept at the same time.

strange, so did i. but imagine does appeal to a much wider audience than metal gear does.

The fact that it appeals to anyone is sad enough.

Yeah, that's true.
Still pretty pathetic that games for tweens beat out a legendary series and its greatest game yet (IMO). Quantity over quality in this case (as far as sales figures go).

At least Fallout broke 9 figures.

Eh, nobody should be surprised. Hell, nobody should be worried, for that matter. Transformers 2 will make more money than Gone, Baby, Gone. The newest Dan Brown novel will sell more copies than the newest David Sedaris book. And people will continue to watch ABC Family. But there will still be stuff that kicks ass. The fact is that most people enjoy shit with zero critical value because they're mentally handicapped as far as taste goes. Oh well. I'm not starving for hardcore games. Are you?

Considering there was one MGS game last year and about a hundred gazillion Imagine games, what's the big deal?

It's not really that surprising. I mean no matter how good the MGS franchise is, it isn't a recognizable franchise amongst the mainstream.

i think the fact that no sony brands are on the list is less surprising than the fact that the sims is at #13. i think sony's brands are less recognizable with the exception of god of war.

yeah because they started creating new IPs instead of making sequels to their PS2 lineup which is a good/bad thing

Also we all know they suck at marketing

It's the double-edged sword of Sony's tendency to ditch their big mascots just as they are beginning to really get strong, and their tendency to promote lots of new IPs. It means very few (if any) tired and stale Sony franchises, and a good mix of originality (LBP, Uncharted, Resistance, etc), but you lose name recognition fiercely.

Imagine if they had held on to Crash Bandicoot and Spyro through the PS2 era, they could have built them into icons on the back of PS2's conquest.

Sony would've indeed done well to keep those classic PS1 franchises, but it didn't and now it's trying too hard to push it's newer IPs as long-time classics, so hard that staleness is starting to result. Take Ratchet & Clank for example. One could argue that it to Playstation is Mario to Nintendo, being a colorful adventure game. Since 2002, there have been 7 primary games (ie, not including spin-offs or expansions like Quest for Booty). Mario has had 6 primary games since 1985. (I'm not arguing that Mario as a whole has not become stale, just the primary platformers in the series have not).

well, if this is their strategy them i'm all for it. sure, i'd love to see the next Sly Cooper or Jak and Daxter, but inFamous and Uncharted are kick-ass alternatives.

@Mike

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_(series)#Main_series

I count 12 main Mario games, and that's not even including things like Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, Super Mario All-Stars, Mario & Luigi, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Strikers, Mario & Sonic, Dr. Mario, Mario Vs. Donkey Kong....

Mario is everywhere Nintendo is. I can't think of many recent core games that haven't at least had a cameo of him. Metroid Prime serves one example, but that started with Retro.

@sonic: All depends how you count 'main'. They're counting NSMB, which I certainly wouldn't count as 'main' entries in the series, even if they are quite good.

oh hey talking of sonic, I was pretty surprised to see him so high up the list. Seriously, I wouldn't have expected Sonic to be ahead of Imagine or Petz or MGS etc. Although, that said... I notice DDR is still on the list... I love DDR and all but how tf did that happen...

@atrimus, while I do agree with you, i would DIE for a new jak game. If they even announced it, I would go out right know and bye a PS3!!!

Ummm, unless I'm missing something, there was a fourth company in that list with more than one $100+ million brand. LucasArts shows up with two: Lego and Star Wars, though that may not count as they don't own the Lego brand, just publish it.

that is a sh*tload of plastic

Theres a simple explanation for this... Sony isn't relying heavily on their already established franchises this year and instead opting for new intersting IPs instead of artificially keeping so many franchises alive like many of the other companies are doing...

New IPs are great for the hardcore gamer, but the risk is bad for investors, which is especially so on the PS3 since it's already been wildly unprofitable for the company due to the huge cost to development the console, such as Cell and Blu-ray.

There is nothing artificial about the tens, no, hundreds of millions of dollars that these franchises are making.

"Sony isn't relying heavily on their already established franchises this year.."

Or for the last 2 years for that matter. As the article states, this is the third year running where Sony doesn't feature here on the top 30.

@ teamamerica,

I call bullshit on this new IP excuse because if you would of read the article it states the following:

"Sony had no top 30 brands for the third year in a row."

So apparently it's not just this year, (as you had stated), it's pretty much encompasses the whole PS3 life span, (up till now).

What this story really speaks to is Sony's blatant arrogance, and their stubborn belief that they can continue to do things their way, (good, bad, or ugly), and the industry, and the gamers, will automatically follow like sheep just because their Sony.

So Sony, (in the famous words of Dr. Phil), how's it workin' for ya ??

When are people going to realize that Guitar Hero and all of these other shovelware brands are mediocre?

Geez, next thing you know talentless rappers and movies with 22% approval on Rotten Tomatoes will sell big...

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Top brands of 2008 owned by Nintendo, EA, Activision, and not Sony

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